The landlord becomes a tenant

2b

A. Robert Kaufman isn't giving up on socialism, but he has had it with the hardscrabble Walbrook neighborhood where he was twice attacked. He's moving to Northwest Baltimore.

The perennial candidate shared that news last week, phoning from a hospital bed where he was recovering from an infection related to the dialysis he has needed since a near-fatal beating and stabbing in 2005 at his home in an apartment building he owns.

The mayoral and kidney-transplant hopeful told The Sun's Dave Ettlin that he will become a tenant at the Brookview Apartments on Western Run Drive.

Kaufman, who was beaten and robbed again in December, mentioned that the Brookview complex has a swimming pool.

"It'll be like a country club compared to where I've been," he added, sounding chipper despite his latest physical setback.

As for his old digs and another building he owns, Kaufman said they'll be managed for him by a businessman in the neighborhood.

A good capitalist solution for the newly minted country clubber.

Give us the credentials -- we know somebody important

The biggest story in town yesterday was the Preakness, and it looks like one Baltimore newspaper turned to the governor's office for help getting its hoof in the door.

Reporters need to ask the Maryland Jockey Club for press credentials by late April. Many of them bust that deadline but try to get through the gate anyway.

"I often get late credential requests, including from The Baltimore Sun yesterday, WJZ today, ESPN magazine yesterday," club vice president Mike Gathagan said Friday. "I've issued 1,600 media credentials. At some point, you got to say `no.' The day before the biggest event in the state, to call and ask for credentials is disrespectful."

Which doesn't mean everyone was taking "no" for an answer. Rumor had it that late last week, the Afro American newspaper had asked Martin O'Malley's office to take up its cause with Gathagan. True?

Said O'Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese: "I did inquire as to the credentialing process." He declined to say he whether had done so on behalf of the Afro.

Diane Hocker, the paper's community relations manager, declined to comment.

Gathagan would say only this much: "A lot of people, when I say `no' initially, they try to find someone I won't say `no' to."

Brazen Serpent on your back? Conaway knows what to do

Del. Frank Conaway Jr. has a book out, and I can't even get past the title: Baptist Gnostic Christian Eubonic Kundalinion Spiritual Ki Do Hermeneutic Metaphysics: The Word: Hermeneutics.

Here's the description on Amazon, where the self-published paperback can be had for $11.95:

"In entering the internal styles of the martial arts and pondering the available life experiences lead me to a new term which I relate to the philosophical term `Spiritual Shock' as a form of awareness effect of raising the Brazen Serpent upon the pole of the spine using the Gnostic cypher key in relation to the book of the Apocalypse."

Still not getting it. But Conaway, 44, who delivers mail for the city comptroller's office when he's not making laws in Annapolis, was good enough to explain.

"This book is a combination of various disciplines which I uncovered and found out were necessary to tell you what the Bible is trying to tell you," he told me.

OK, getting clearer. But Conaway's next book surely will be more accessible. It's about the low-carb diet he followed to drop 105 pounds.